Newsom smart to seek to reframe juvenile justice

AP

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks with Juan Cruz Lopez Jr. right, a youthful offender at the O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility on Tuesday in Stockton. He wants to put juvenile prisons under the state's Health and Human Services Agency instead of the agency that runs adult prisons.

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks with Juan Cruz Lopez Jr. right, a youthful offender at the O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility on Tuesday in Stockton. He wants to put juvenile prisons under the state's Health and Human Services Agency instead of the agency that runs adult prisons. (AP)

California’s treatment of juvenile offenders is far better than in the nightmarish days of the California Youth Authority, which was drastically reorganized and renamed in 2005 by the Schwarzenegger administration and the Legislature after years of scandals involving guards’ brutality toward and sexual abuse of wards at de facto youth prisons.

Nevertheless, Gov. Gavin Newsom is right to call for what could be a profound new change: moving control of the Juvenile Justice Division away from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to the state Health and Human Services Agency. Most states have already made similar moves. Newsom says this will create an even greater push to help more than 660 of the state’s most troubled youths to get mental health care and to learn life and job skills while in custody, then go on to productive lives. The governor is particularly enthusiastic about the potential of pre-apprentice construction labor programs and computer coding classes to help some of these young offenders.

But according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Newsom’s proposal got a very wary reaction from activists and from probation officers and medical workers who deal with juvenile offenders. They note that changing the juvenile division’s home by itself accomplishes nothing and worry about a return to the bad old days, when far more offenders were locked up in state facilities instead of being put on probation or held in county juvenile halls that are near family members. This wariness makes sense. The state has made progress on juvenile justice and should worry about losing momentum.

But in twointerviews last year with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, Newsom said he would be an active governor intent on overseeing a broad improvement in how state government works. His juvenile justice proposal reflects this spirit. If Newsom can adequately answer stakeholders’ concerns, it should be approved.